The Newest Cancer Cure May Come from Microbes in Deep Ocean Muck

What would you say if I told you that the next generation of powerful anti-cancer drugs might come from an obscure genus of bacteria that live in the muck at the bottom of the ocean? For the past five years, a team at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at U.C. San Diego has been working to explore the potential of microbes called actinomycetes found in deep ocean sediment. The reason these primitive creatures, many of which were only recently identified and named, so intrigue scientists is that they produce powerful natural antibiotics that also function to inhibit inflammation and cancer. (Many of the common antibiotics we use today like streptomycin and vancomycin were originally synthesized from bacteria, but the antibiotic potential of land-based bacteria has been drying up in the past ten years.)

Found in warm, subtropical waters such as those off the coast of Fiji and the Bahamas, the newly named genus Salinispora includes hundreds of strains; so far, of 100 strains tested, 80 percent produced molecules that inhibit cancer cell growth, and 35 percent killed pathogenic bacteria and fungi. Is it any surprise that harvest operations are ramping up?

Since making the original discovery of the new microbes in 2002, a team led by William Fenical of the Scripps Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine (CMBB) has been working to isolate the antibacterial compound, which they've now dubbed salinisporamide A. But this would just be another lab breakthrough if it weren't for the team's entrepreneurial hutzpah, which has already resulted in numerous patents and licenses for development rights.

Commercial development of two powerful new anti-cancer drugs derived from salinisporamide A is already underway in the labs of a small, 30-person company called Nereus Pharmaceuticals in nearby San Diego. Despite a fair amount of secrecy, they've landed significant VC funding and lined up partnerships with big international pharmaceuticals.

The company's unusual business plan is based on developing a "library" of marine microbes with antibiotic and anti-cancer potential that they're genetically sequencing. Last year Scripps announced a successful project to genetically map one of the strains of Salinispora, a breakthrough that will hopefully lead to the ability to synthesize the active compounds, producing them more cheaply and in greater quantities.

Two drugs are already through Phase I testing and a lung cancer compound recently entered Phase II trials. Company execs hope the result of the broad-net "library" approach will be a faster and broader R&D pipeline with multiple products in testing at once.

The Future of the Planet: Capturing Carbon

Big energy geek news this week as the Lacq carbon capture coal plant finally came online in France; the first carbon capture and storage (CCS) retrofit on a commercial scale. The technology came from energy company Total, which retrofited an existing gas-fired boiler to the tune of 60 milion Euros. Britain, which pioneered study of CCS but then dropped the ball, was embarrassed and defensive as quoted by the Guardian. In its ideal performance, CCS could trap 90 percent of a power plant's carbon emissions. Although everyone agrees that carbon capture is an absolute necessity to get greenhouse gasses under control, the technology has moved much more slowly than expected, and is still years away from being commercially viable on a large scale. Let's get moving, people, the glaciers can't wait for you to get your oxycombustion calculations right!!

A New Prostate Cancer Drug Wows Doctors

It's hard to weed the hope from the hype when it comes to new cancer drugs, but a new study in this week's issue of Science introduces a drug worth paying attention to. Currently known by the uncharismatic designation MDV3100 (presumably it'll get a more memorable name before it gets to market) it's made by local San Francisco biotech Medivation and results of a Phase 1-2 trial were impressive. So impressive, in fact, that the company's rushing to launch a Phase 3 trial, and if you're a candidate I'd suggest trying to get into it. This drug's not going to be the next blockbuster, at least not soon, since its target patient population is fairly limited. But for those folks -- men with prostate cancer that's resistant to anti-androgens-- it could make a life or death difference. 

An unlucky subset of patients has prostate cancer that's "castration-resistant," which sounds like it should be good, but is in fact bad. CRPC means the tumors are resistant to traditional anti-androgen drugs, specifically bicalutamide, the regimen of choice. The men in Medivation's recent trial had already failed standard hormonal therapies, and many had also failed standard chemo as well. In other words, they were running out of options fast. In one third of the men who took it, MDV3100 showed a significant drop in PSA, a sign the medication worked to stop the tumor's advance. 

Medivation's a company to watch from a business and entrepreneurship standpoint as well. They developed the experimental Alzheimer's drug Dimebon, which Pfizer bought the rights to in September for $725 million.

There are still spots available in the ongoing Phase 1-2 open label trial, and a new Phase 3 study, announced March 19th, will enroll 1200 men across the country. If you or a man you love has CRPC that hasn't responded to chemo, find the closest trial center by visiting Medivation's trials page.

Open Source Online Textbooks In Classrooms Now

I love it when VCs give a vote of confidence to something I've hailed as a worthwhile innovation; makes me think once in awhile I get it right. That's what happened this week when Flat World Knowledge, the open source online textbook start-up I wrote about for CNN Money and Fortune Small Business in December, got an $8 million injection of VC funds from Valhalla Partners, Greenhill SAVP and High Peaks Venture Partners. Now, I know 8 mil is small potatoes, but with VC channels all but dry right now and this being Flat World's first round (previous funding was all from unnamed Angels), it's one of those times the thought counts.

The pinch hitting schools, students, and their families may mean good timing for the plucky start-up, which has its first ten titles -- all aimed at management and business schools -- ready for show and tell to college faculty this spring.

Catching Cancer Before It's Cancer with Magnetic Nano-Particles

What if it were possible to find cancerous tumors while they were so small they were really just clusters of hyperactive cells circulating in the blood? (Which is what tumors really are, except on a larger, and scarier, scale.) That's the promise of a new magnetic nanotechnology currently in development as a joint project at Stanford and UC Santa Cruz. Described by the research team as "real-time magnetic nanotag sensing" in a recent paper, the technology uses nanosize magnetic beads as "tags" that attach to multiple cancer-related proteins -- known as biomarkers -- in a blood serum sample. Still in the prototype stage, it's much more sensitive than other fluorescent assays currently being tested, most of which can detect only one biomarker at a time. The research is being supported by the National Cancer Institute's Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer, an iniative that we hope will deliver on the promise of nanotechnology to catch cancer while it's still curable. Two of the lead researchers, Dr. Shan Wang of Stanford and Nader Pourmand have cofounded a startup, MagArray, to develop the technology. Definitely worth keeping a watch on.

"Innovation Journalism" -- What Is It?

I'm planning to attend the 5th annual Innovation Journalism Conference at Stanford (one of my alma maters) May 21-23. What, you may well wonder, is innovation journalism? Looking at the conference program, it seems many people are wondering that too, including -- perhaps -- the organizers. The concept seems to cut both ways; about 50 percent of the presentations are about covering innovation, while the other 50 percent provide a forum to discuss the ways journalists, and journalism organizations (read: newspapers desperate to stench the bleed), can get on board with high-tech innovation. So, as expected, there are presentations such as "How to keep a critical perspective when covering innovation?" (Right up my alley.) But there are also presentations on how social media are changing the way people consume news, which would be of more interest to a Gannett exec than to me. It'll be interesting to see how all these perspectives collide.

Cut the Cord: Wireless Electricity Comes to Market

I wrote this for Business 2.0 last spring, but it's still circulating from blog to blog, so I thought the interest level merited a revisit. Here's a video clip that Powercast showed at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), where they made another splashy presentation.
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How much money could you make from a technology that replaces electrical wires? A startup called Powercast, along with the more than 100 companies that have inked agreements with it, is about to start finding out. Powercast and its first major partner, electronics giant Philips, are set to launch their first device powered by electricity broadcast through the air.

It may sound futuristic, but Powercast's platform uses nothing more complex than a radio--and is cheap enough for just about any company to incorporate into a product. A transmitter plugs into the wall, and a dime-size receiver (the real innovation, costing about $5 to make) can be embedded into any low-voltage device. The receiver turns radio waves into DC electricity, recharging the device's battery at a distance of up to 3 feet.

Picture your cell phone charging up the second you sit down at your desk, and you start to get a sense of the opportunity. How big can it get? "The sky's the limit," says John Shearer, Powercast's founder and CEO. He estimates shipping "many millions of units" by the end of 2008.

For years, electricity experts said this kind of thing couldn't be done. "If you had asked me seven months ago if this was possible, I would have said, 'Are you dreaming? Have you been smoking something?'" says Govi Rao, vice president and general manager of solid-state lighting at Philips (Charts). "But to see it work is just amazing. It could revolutionize what we know about power."

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So impressed was Rao after witnessing Powercast's demo last summer that he walked away jotting down a list of the industries to which the technology could immediately be applied: lighting, peripherals, all kinds of handheld electronics. Philips partnered with Powercast last July, and their first joint product, a wirelessly powered LED light stick, will hit the market this year. Computer peripherals, such as a wireless keyboard and mouse, will follow in 2008.

Broadcasting power through the air isn't a new idea. Researchers have experimented with capturing the radiation in radio frequency at high power but had difficulty capturing it at consumer-friendly low power. "You'd have energy bouncing off the walls and arriving in a wide range of voltages," says Zoya Popovic, an electrical engineering professor at the University of Colorado who works on wireless electricity projects for the U.S. military.

That's where Shearer came in. A former physicist based in Pittsburgh, he and his team spent four years poring over wireless electricity research in a lab hidden behind his family's coffee house. He figured much of the energy bouncing off walls could be captured. All you had to do was build a receiver that could act like a radio tuned to many frequencies at once.

"I realized we wanted to grab that static and harness it," Shearer says. "It's all energy."

Entrepreneur finds 'suite' dreams

So the Powercast team set about creating and patenting that receiver. Its tiny but hyperefficient receiving circuits can adjust to variations in load and field strength while maintaining a constant DC voltage. Thanks to the fact that it transmits only safe low wattages, the Powercast system quickly won FCC approval--and $10 million from private investors.

Powercast says it has signed nondisclosure agreements to develop products with more than 100 companies, including major manufacturers of cell phones, MP3 players, automotive parts, temperature sensors, hearing aids, and medical implants.

The last of those alone could be a multibillion-dollar market: Pacemakers, defibrillators, and the like require surgery to replace dead batteries. But with a built-in Powercast receiver, those batteries could last a lifetime.

"Everyone's looking to cut that last cord," says Alex Slawsby, a consultant at Innosight who specializes in disruptive innovation. "Think of the billion cell phones sold last year. If you could get Powercast into a small percentage of the high-end models, those would be huge numbers."

Could Powercast's technology also work for larger devices? Perhaps, but not quite yet. Laptop computers, for example, use more than 10 times the wattage of Powercast transmissions.

But industry trends are on Shearer's side: Thanks to less energy-hungry LCD screens and processors, PC power consumption is slowly diminishing. Within five years, Shearer says, laptops will be down to single-digit wattage--making his revenue potential even more electrifying.

Originally published in Business 2.0 magazine.